July 31, 2010

Five Things To Be

Once upon a time, between the time I was 26 and the time I was 32, I had reduced my life to four essentials. If I could get my hands on it in appreciable quantities with good quality I was going to be happy. It was a necessary simplification of my life to serve personal ends, having been a bit over altruistic at my own expense. Those four things shouldn't surprise anyone: {Sex, Money, Music, Computers}. It turned out that I was successful in relatively short order, which gave me the satisfaction that not achieving Unity had denied me.

There were three types of unity I was trying to aid in accomplishing in those disheartening days. The first was Black Unity. That's an old story I shouldn't belabor. It was a kind of resignation I gave on my own but those attached to me wouldn't accept. Which brings to mind a particular day in the Cal State Student Union where I tried to quit one of my offices graciously only to hear from my peers that anything was better than nothing. Perhaps that was a pivotal day whose lesson I have finally learned.

The second sort of unity I was trying to accomplish was from Mishima, the Unity of Pen and Sword. It was my way of coming to accept America on more Rightist terms than ever, but culminated in a feeling of deep betrayal over Iran-Contra. So I think it must be said in retrospect that there has probably long been a desire in me to be the Conservative that I believe myself to be today, but a failure to grasp the principles and only judge Conservatism by the actions of its self-professed adherents had stretched that road to long and bumpy proportions.

The third sort of unity I sought has been achieved for me in the ascendancy of the social status of those of us in the IT business. I have suffered as a geek since the age of 14 when I first touched and fell in love with the logic of computer programming, a logic I have failed to see in my fellow men who castigate me and my binary life into a social zero. The bit has flipped. Now I make good, if not orthodontist money. And everybody agrees that us cargo pants wearing, command line jockeys with the Bruce Willis Surrogates style goatee are way cooler than orthodontists. Unity achieved.

All of those unities required me to be outwardly focused, to negotiate social paths and find ways for them to influence me and me to influence them. Without them, I felt that the world would not and could not understand a man like me. But in 1987, I turned my back on those social things and focused on ME. I had to get my four things, and so that was all I cared about, a brilliant luxury afforded a member of an emergent middle class.

Atop Maslow's Pyramid at last I began at some point to consider which nation of which millions were holding others back. It was difficult for me to understand what germ had poisoned the minds of any dozen cuties in New York and Boston that made them so hesitant around one as unleashed as myself. I was beyond the yoke of ghettos sentiments and detriments but found myself as Eli walking in the badlands, looking for marriage among women with baggage. But even beyond that personal desire was a yearning to understand why. One clue was offered by Marshall Blonsky whose deep understanding has still not been adequately communicated to this day. Americans were buying signs of success and signifying to each other like monkeys without any deeper comprehension of the kind of great apes they should actually be. And so at the age of 31 or so, I recognized we all needed philosophy more than we knew.

--

Yesterday afternoon I came home after a brutal week's work in which expectations went awry and I had to report my project status moving from green to yellow. But by 4:30 on Friday all things seemed to be nailed back onto the table. So I arrived at the my front door with a smile beyond the coming inspiration of Papa John's Pizza for dinner. Five things to be popped into my head along the lines of the Epicurean Edge. Along with their polar opposites they were:

Happy v Unhappy

Healthy v Sick

Rich v Poor

Beautiful v Ugly

Wise v Foolish

And then my mind immediately started partial combinatorial gymnastics developing an ontology of types. What if you are Happy, Foolish and Ugly? What if you are Rich, Wise and Unhappy? What if you are Sick, Poor and Happy? It's difficult to resist creating a Myers-Briggs just for these formulations, especially since it's obvious that the second combination is Dick Cheney.

But overnight I realized with some regret that these seem to lack something akin to the concept of virtue. They are things to achieve, perhaps only surface attributes of something deeper. They are things to be, rather than things to do, and it must always be about what you *do* rather than how you appear to be. So now it seems foolish in retrospect that I joked about that list with my kids while ordering the pizza. Still, as I went online and gave the pizza guy my credit card numbers which rejected twice, ironically as Bank of America was calling me on the other line, I began to panic. After all, the house note is due. Where's my money? I just used another card and discovered that I had actually just gotten my second quarter bonus (Yay Unity Three!). I walked downstairs after paying a few bills online much more happy than I had trudging up. But the virtue question was unresolved.

--

Somewhere in the middle of that period of my young adulthood I ambled across the work of Stephen L. Carter. I have two of his virtue books, Integrity and Civility. As well, I read The Emperor of Ocean Park and his Confessions of an Affirmative Action Baby. The last book, I waited entirely too long to read and I think now with a bit of regret how I might be different if I had begun to love Carter before I began to love Cornel West. West whose provocations of the prophetic drew out that road to conservatism even longer with his socialist diversions tied to religious faith. Social Justice, another unity. I could have just dealt with making me a better me - beyond my being unleashed.

Achieving those Unities is a shared responsibility. It's difficult for me to say how much we should share or if it is reasonable to expect to achieve them. I am much more certain about the value of personal virtue. I know it is a paradox. On the one hand you cannot know what the emergent whole of a million people doing is going to be. On the other hand you cannot really know or be a self without the context of the society. But you can know what you desire, what completes you on an an individual level, and you can know what you will or will not do to achieve that. And at any moment you can know how you feel about all that. So it makes the most sense, practically speaking, to measure yourself well and know how you will deal with whatever society might be. You cannot direct and create the Unity. Best comport yourself to your best self. You'll feel the friction or lubrication of society no matter what.

--

After pizza, we watched a couple movies as the girls took Sprite's braids out. The last was Surrogates.

Ever since 'Moonlighting' I've thought Bruce Willis is my actor. Finally
I've seen him play a hero less prone to action than normal in a film
that should have been a touch better than it is, but was good
nonetheless.

That was all the thinking I've captured on a film that illustrates a great deal about how people lose faith in themselves and put it on their surface characteristics - how people are not whom they appear to be.

We all have to be something, and we have to do a lot in personal and social contexts to meet with our own personal destinies. Today I am decidedly for looking after number one, in the best way possible. To examine one's life thoroughly and come up with a consistency and honor one can live a long life with. To put it up for inspection and to share truths about life with others. I don't have a simple list of five things to be, but that's a start. Somewhere between the poles are where we are and I think its our virtues that drive us one way or another.

Comments

Five Things To Be

Once upon a time, between the time I was 26 and the time I was 32, I had reduced my life to four essentials. If I could get my hands on it in appreciable quantities with good quality I was going to be happy. It was a necessary simplification of my life to serve personal ends, having been a bit over altruistic at my own expense. Those four things shouldn't surprise anyone: {Sex, Money, Music, Computers}. It turned out that I was successful in relatively short order, which gave me the satisfaction that not achieving Unity had denied me.

There were three types of unity I was trying to aid in accomplishing in those disheartening days. The first was Black Unity. That's an old story I shouldn't belabor. It was a kind of resignation I gave on my own but those attached to me wouldn't accept. Which brings to mind a particular day in the Cal State Student Union where I tried to quit one of my offices graciously only to hear from my peers that anything was better than nothing. Perhaps that was a pivotal day whose lesson I have finally learned.

The second sort of unity I was trying to accomplish was from Mishima, the Unity of Pen and Sword. It was my way of coming to accept America on more Rightist terms than ever, but culminated in a feeling of deep betrayal over Iran-Contra. So I think it must be said in retrospect that there has probably long been a desire in me to be the Conservative that I believe myself to be today, but a failure to grasp the principles and only judge Conservatism by the actions of its self-professed adherents had stretched that road to long and bumpy proportions.

The third sort of unity I sought has been achieved for me in the ascendancy of the social status of those of us in the IT business. I have suffered as a geek since the age of 14 when I first touched and fell in love with the logic of computer programming, a logic I have failed to see in my fellow men who castigate me and my binary life into a social zero. The bit has flipped. Now I make good, if not orthodontist money. And everybody agrees that us cargo pants wearing, command line jockeys with the Bruce Willis Surrogates style goatee are way cooler than orthodontists. Unity achieved.

All of those unities required me to be outwardly focused, to negotiate social paths and find ways for them to influence me and me to influence them. Without them, I felt that the world would not and could not understand a man like me. But in 1987, I turned my back on those social things and focused on ME. I had to get my four things, and so that was all I cared about, a brilliant luxury afforded a member of an emergent middle class.

Atop Maslow's Pyramid at last I began at some point to consider which nation of which millions were holding others back. It was difficult for me to understand what germ had poisoned the minds of any dozen cuties in New York and Boston that made them so hesitant around one as unleashed as myself. I was beyond the yoke of ghettos sentiments and detriments but found myself as Eli walking in the badlands, looking for marriage among women with baggage. But even beyond that personal desire was a yearning to understand why. One clue was offered by Marshall Blonsky whose deep understanding has still not been adequately communicated to this day. Americans were buying signs of success and signifying to each other like monkeys without any deeper comprehension of the kind of great apes they should actually be. And so at the age of 31 or so, I recognized we all needed philosophy more than we knew.

--

Yesterday afternoon I came home after a brutal week's work in which expectations went awry and I had to report my project status moving from green to yellow. But by 4:30 on Friday all things seemed to be nailed back onto the table. So I arrived at the my front door with a smile beyond the coming inspiration of Papa John's Pizza for dinner. Five things to be popped into my head along the lines of the Epicurean Edge. Along with their polar opposites they were:

Happy v Unhappy

Healthy v Sick

Rich v Poor

Beautiful v Ugly

Wise v Foolish

And then my mind immediately started partial combinatorial gymnastics developing an ontology of types. What if you are Happy, Foolish and Ugly? What if you are Rich, Wise and Unhappy? What if you are Sick, Poor and Happy? It's difficult to resist creating a Myers-Briggs just for these formulations, especially since it's obvious that the second combination is Dick Cheney.

But overnight I realized with some regret that these seem to lack something akin to the concept of virtue. They are things to achieve, perhaps only surface attributes of something deeper. They are things to be, rather than things to do, and it must always be about what you *do* rather than how you appear to be. So now it seems foolish in retrospect that I joked about that list with my kids while ordering the pizza. Still, as I went online and gave the pizza guy my credit card numbers which rejected twice, ironically as Bank of America was calling me on the other line, I began to panic. After all, the house note is due. Where's my money? I just used another card and discovered that I had actually just gotten my second quarter bonus (Yay Unity Three!). I walked downstairs after paying a few bills online much more happy than I had trudging up. But the virtue question was unresolved.

--

Somewhere in the middle of that period of my young adulthood I ambled across the work of Stephen L. Carter. I have two of his virtue books, Integrity and Civility. As well, I read The Emperor of Ocean Park and his Confessions of an Affirmative Action Baby. The last book, I waited entirely too long to read and I think now with a bit of regret how I might be different if I had begun to love Carter before I began to love Cornel West. West whose provocations of the prophetic drew out that road to conservatism even longer with his socialist diversions tied to religious faith. Social Justice, another unity. I could have just dealt with making me a better me - beyond my being unleashed.

Achieving those Unities is a shared responsibility. It's difficult for me to say how much we should share or if it is reasonable to expect to achieve them. I am much more certain about the value of personal virtue. I know it is a paradox. On the one hand you cannot know what the emergent whole of a million people doing is going to be. On the other hand you cannot really know or be a self without the context of the society. But you can know what you desire, what completes you on an an individual level, and you can know what you will or will not do to achieve that. And at any moment you can know how you feel about all that. So it makes the most sense, practically speaking, to measure yourself well and know how you will deal with whatever society might be. You cannot direct and create the Unity. Best comport yourself to your best self. You'll feel the friction or lubrication of society no matter what.

--

After pizza, we watched a couple movies as the girls took Sprite's braids out. The last was Surrogates.

Ever since 'Moonlighting' I've thought Bruce Willis is my actor. Finally
I've seen him play a hero less prone to action than normal in a film
that should have been a touch better than it is, but was good
nonetheless.

That was all the thinking I've captured on a film that illustrates a great deal about how people lose faith in themselves and put it on their surface characteristics - how people are not whom they appear to be.

We all have to be something, and we have to do a lot in personal and social contexts to meet with our own personal destinies. Today I am decidedly for looking after number one, in the best way possible. To examine one's life thoroughly and come up with a consistency and honor one can live a long life with. To put it up for inspection and to share truths about life with others. I don't have a simple list of five things to be, but that's a start. Somewhere between the poles are where we are and I think its our virtues that drive us one way or another.